The last day of my adventure in New Haven, and it’s hard to believe it’s already here. The week has flown by. On the agenda today is a special tour of sites related to Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening in Connecticut and Massachusetts. To document our trip, this post will have a mix of media, using pictures that i took on the trip as well as text explaining images.

Because of the size of this post, it’s not all going to be on the front page of the site. So, to view the whole thing just click

The day got started with an early trek over to the Yale Divinity School where we were to get on the bus at around 8:00AM to get a good start on the day. Most of what we were going to see would be outside, so we were all hoping the rain would hold off. Thankfully, it did. Before getting to the pictures of the trip, here’s a couple showing the room we spent hours in discussing the man himself.

What better place to have a week-long class on Jonathan Edwards than in the Jonathan Edwards Dining Room? Although, the room hardly looked like a dining room at all.

The room was the perfect size for the nine students and two instructors. Seminar-type set up that really aided in fostering meaningful discussion of the texts and concepts.

A close-up of the portrait on the wall. Edwards never sat for this portrait. It was created by an artist in the 19th century, I believe, using the portrait that Edwards did sit for, for the bust, and making up the rest.

The first stop on the trip was East Windsor, Connecticut, which is now called South Windsor (for my purposes here, I’m going to refer to the town as Edwards would have known it, East Windsor; just keep in mind that it is modern South Windsor). Not exactly sure how that works, but there you go. East Windsor was where Edwards was born and grew up, his father Timothy being pastor of the town church. If you’ve looked carefully at the sign, you may notice a glaring omission. While mentioning Edwards’s work at Bolton, Yale, Stockbridge, and Princeton, there is no mention of Northampton, where Edwards pastored from 1726-1750! Perhaps there is some bitterness toward Northampton for ousting East Windsor’s beloved son?

This is the house that now sits on the property where Timothy and Esther’s house stood. Unfortunately, this is not the house that Edwards grew up in. It was amazing, driving through old East Windsor, that so many old houses are still around. The oldest I recall seeing was a house that had been there since 1694. Behind the house that currently exists are the famous woods and swampland that Edwards played in as a boy, and where he and some friends built a prayer closet.

This is the grave of Timothy Edwards, Jonathan’s father. It had been raining all week and all the gravestones we saw were either soaked or partially soaked which did funny things with the legibility of the words on the markers. So these did not come out as well as I would have hoped, but you can still get a sense of them, I hope. Timothy and his wife, Esther, are buried in the graveyard that used to be next to the church where TImothy pastored. More on that in a second. Timothy died, just a few months before Jonathan, in January 1758. This was a traumatic year for the Edwards clan, losing Timothy in January, Jonathan in March, Jonathan’s daughter Esther Edwards Burr in April, and Sarah, Jonathan’s wife, in October.

The grave of Jonathan’s mother, Esther Stoddard Edwards, who died in January 1771 at the age of 99. Quite remarkable for the times! Esther was the daughter of Solomon Stoddard, the highly revered pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts whom Jonathan would succeed. Notice the iconography on the gravestone. Seventeenth and eighteenth colonial gravestone iconography is quite fascinating (and, at times, humorous). In addition to Timothy and Esther being buried in East Windsor, a couple of Edwards’s sisters, of which he had 10, are buried there as well.

Adjacent to the graveyard is a building that now sits where Timothy’s church would have been. The current building is not a church, however. It is a Masonic Lodge. How I would love to get Timothy or Jonathan’s thoughts on that!

This is an interesting site dealing with Edwards’s legacy. As you can tell from the sign, this is the president’s house of a seminary that was established in East Windsor in 1834. This seminary was borne out of a theological controversy in which both sides claimed to be “true Edwardsians.” This conflict is what is known as the “Taylor-Tyler Controversy,” N.W. Taylor, professor at Yale, and his followers on one side, and Bennet Tyler and his followers on the other. Because of what Tyler perceived to be liberalizing tendencies at Yale, he and his group founded a new establishment for the training of pastors and religious thinkers, intentionally doing so in Jonathan Edwards’s hometown. This was their way of proclaiming that they were the true Edwardsians, defending the true, orthodox, Calvinist faith. This seminary was moved in 1865 and is now Hartford Seminary, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Next stop, Enfield, Connecticut. I suppose you could call this the Mecca of Edwardsiana. At least in how we remember him, much to my chagrin, today. Pretty self-explanatory, this is the very place where the church in Enfield stood, in which, on July 8, 1741, Edwards famously preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s interesting to note that this was not the first time Edwards preached this sermon. He preached it to his congregation in Northampton a couple of months before, but did not get quite the response from them as he did in Enfield.

In Northampton, Massachusetts now, where Edwards pastored from 1726-1750, and where is grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, ministered for an astounding 55 years. This plaque is on the steps of the church that is currently there today, though it’s not the building that Edwards would have known. However, the bottom step and a semi-circular stone in front of the current church are original to the church in the mid-eighteenth century. The church that sits there today has two churches meeting in it, a United Church of Christ congregation, and an American Baptist congregation. Again, it would be interesting to see what Edwards would think of this, especially in regard to the presence of “separatist Baptists.”

The grave of Solomon Stoddard in a nearby cemetery. Not quite as well-kept as some of the other graves we have seen.

Also in the Northampton cemetery is the grave of David Brainerd, a missionary to the Native Americans and good friend of the Edwards family. Brainerd’s journals were edited and published by Jonathan, along with an account of Brainerd’s life, and the resulting Life of David Brainerd was the standard text, in addition to the Bible, for missionaries going into the field. It is still read widely today. A couple of irregularities about this grave marker: first is the curious spelling of Brainerd’s name, which is here spelled “Brainard.” Though it’s believed that both spellings were used, most references use the “e” spelling. This stone also incorrectly lists Brainerd’s death date and age. Brainerd died October 9, 1747, not the 10th, and was 29 years old, not 32.

Buried next to David Brainerd, is Jonathan’s daughter, Jerusha. Jerusha was very beloved of her father, and her death on February 14, 1748 was a great shock to Jonathan and the entire family. The fact that she is buried next to Brainerd, as well as their traveling to Boston a couple of times together unchaperoned, has led to much speculation about whether there were romantic feelings between the two young people. None of this is confirmed, although the two were definitely kindred spirits in terms of piety and religious devotion.

A monument to the Edwards family. Jonathan and Sarah are not buried in Northampton, but the good people of the town saw fit to erect a monument to their memory. A classy gesture by a town who really wanted nothing to do with Edwards after 1750, though Joseph Hawley, Jr., one of Edwards’s most vocal critics, reconciled with Edwards later on. Jonathan and Sarah are listed on the front of this marker, and their ten children occupy the other three sides.

After leaving Northampton we made our way to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, home of the Indian mission in which Edwards was involved from 1751-1758. Our first stop in Stockbridge bore no pictures, unfortunately. We visited the Stockbridge public library where a number of Edwards artifacts are held, but photography was not allowed. The most interesting piece held by the library is the rotating desk that Edwards designed himself and had made for his studies. Very practical. I could use one myself.

The picture is of a sundial marking the place where the Edwards home stood while they were in Stockbridge. Quite quaint.

Our last stop on the tour was the Stockbridge mission house, which is the very house that stood in the eighteenth century, though it has been moved from its original location. This was the home of John Sargeant and Abigail Williams Sargeant, nemeses to Edwards while he was in Stockbridge. The inside of the house (no photos allowed!) gives a good idea of what life was like in the Indian wilderness for the Edwards family, though the Sargeants were probably more well off than the Edwards’ would have been. After Stockbridge, we got on the bus to head back, our tour having ended. However…

What better way to end a photo essay of sites related to Jonathan Edwards than his final resting place? I took these pictures on a trip to Princeton last year. This is the marker of Sarah Edwards, Jonathan’s wife, who died in October 1758, just a little over six months after her husband died. I love the epitaph, “A sincere Friend, a courteous and Obliging Neighbour, A judiciously indulgent Mother, An affectionate and prudent Wife.”

And finally, the grave of Jonathan Edwards himself, buried at Princeton cemetery, being the third president of the, then, College of New Jersey. His epitaph is entirely in Latin, and unfortunately I do not have a transcription or translation of it with me right now. Hopefully I can get back up there sometime and sneak a charcoal rubbing of the epitaph.

It was a great week and a great class (this is all of us on the steps of the church in Northampton). I’m thankful for the opportunity, for the interactions, and for the wonderful experience provided by Ken Minkema and Adriaan Neele of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale. There’s talk that there will be a different class related to Edwards offered next year, perhaps a little more narrow than this year’s, so I look forward to that. If you are interested at all in Edwards (why else would you be here!), you should absolutely consider making the trip. You will not regret it.

Filed under:
JEahW June 2009, jec at yale, life of brainerd, sinners in the hands of an angry god